I went to Honduras with some friends in high school. We bought machetes and various knives because they were cheap and we thought we were cool. Thought we packed everything on our checked bags on the way back to the US, but when I got home I pulled a huge knife out of my carry-on. Easily a foot long blade. I have no idea how security missed it, but I don't think 'ooops' would have been an acceptable answer.

EDIT: I flew from Honduras into Houston, TX. We missed our flight and stayed in a hotel overnight before flying into LAX. So my bag was rechecked and weapon missed again.

Random fact that'll probably get me on a blacklist: Xray scanners can't see that something is sharp or not, so as long as the shape of the item isn't too clearly knife shaped, they might have just thought it was a bit of metal shielding some electronics.

TL;DR: Went to tropical resort with a drug lord, smuggled back cocaine for $10,000

I've posted this story before on a thread with a similar question. May as well tell it again! Throwaway for obvious reasons.

This was a few years back. I was working a minimum wage contract job, had some credit card debt, wasn't happy with my financial situation at all. A friend of mine who is always looking for the "easy way" to make money had always talked about her "uncle" that was big in the cocaine business and could set us up to do some illegal shit for a lot of money. "Yeah, right, you're crazy" was my usual response. But for some reason, I decided "Enh, fuck it" and agreed to do it.

The two of us ended up going to a tropical vacation resort (country name withheld; but the kind of place you'd expect to have lots of drug related business) for a week and she and her "uncle" went around setting everything up for us. Turns out all we had to do was pack some wine bottles in our luggage that was full of liquified cocaine that would later be processed into powder (I honestly don't know how it works, but that's what I was told; I wasn't going to question this guy).

We spent the week in this beautiful resort, fully paid for, and had a blast. Partied, got some sun, and bragged about the weather to our friends in the cold winter back home. It got serious when we packed our bags to go home and realized the airport was our make-it-or-break-it point. It was a terrifying wait at the terminal, terrifying flight home, and a terrifying wait for our cocaine-filled luggage to come out when we landed.

We left the airport, went to her "uncle"s mother's house where we dropped off the packaged wine bottles and each collected $10,000 in cash. I slowly paid off my debt with my work wages, and lived off that cash for a long time.

Scariest shit of my life. I will never do it again. I was so fucking lucky we weren't busted. Most illegal thing I have ever done. Thinking back, I can't believe I actually went through with it; it was the stupidest thing ever.

I've only ever told about 3 of my closest friends whom I trust with my life. One of them only found out because I accidentally left my mini safe open when he was over once and he found the stash of bills.

Writing this makes me realize how insanely crazy it is. It probably won't be believed by many, but trust me, it happened

Not particularly; mostly used it to live day-to-day. I used my job money to pay my bills/debts, so it was pretty much used for fun money. I blew through most of it at first. Shopping, partying, even got laser eye surgery. I spent a big chunk of it going on another vacation a few months later.

You were seriously fucking lucky; most people drug smugglers hire to take drugs on commercial flights are patsies meant to provide a steady stream of "major busts" to the authorities while the real shipments are ignored, usually the drug smugglers themselves tip off the authorities.

Back in high school, 4 of us were on the way to orchestra practice when the kid driving hit something in the fast lane and blew out two tires. We pulled into the center divide and ran across the the highway, climbed up a hill, crawled under a barbed wire fence and, after hearing a dog barking, ran to the nearest building.

There was what appeared to be a receptionist inside, so we asked explained our predicament and asked to borrow the phone. During this conversation, a number of women started coming out into the lobby area. They were eyeing us curiously, occasionally whispering to each other. The kid driving finally got his parents on the phone and said, "We got a flat, can you pick us up? We're at some hotel off the I-35.”

At this point, the ladies all busted up laughing. The 'receptionist' said, "Honey, tell your folks y'all are at the Mabel Bassett Women's Correctional Facility."

(Note: This was in the 80s. Pre-cell phone era and the prison - which has since relocated - was a minimum security facility.)

It took a while for uniformed armed guards to get there; it was after we placed the call. I think the guards were more concerned about getting in trouble for not noticing 4 kids coming into a secure facility than they were about busting us for trespassing.

Accidentally smuggled codeine into the US. I didn't realise Paracetomol+Codeine wasn't legal here (Tylenol-3 in the US) without a prescription. It's an over the counter migraine remedy in the UK. Asked a pharmacist friend what the US brand name was and she informed me I just committed a felony by bringing it in. Pretty sure they wouldn't have taken "oops" as a defence.

I imagine you would only be caught if they were actually searching for drugs and were checking off what you had versus what was legal. That strikes me as one of those things that the average cop himself wouldn't know off the top of his head, especially if it was in a Tylenol (EDIT: legitimate looking store bought) package.

This is wrong. They are definitely allowed to write prescriptions for drugs that aren't prescription-only.

When a GP tells you to take an over-the-counter drug, they'll will usually just write down the name of the drug and point out that you'll save money by buying OTC instead of paying the prescription charge (£8.05 at the moment).

However, they'll generally write a prescription if the drug costs over £8.05, or you don't pay for prescriptions (children, the elderly, certain chronic conditions, etc.), and I'm sure they'd do it if you asked.

My colombian friend and i, at the time we were 12 years old +-, we would go around the rich neighborhoods and find nice cars. They had really nice Air Plugs on the wheels such as Ferarri symbol on them, Porsche, Mercedes and all that instead of just black plastic. We would screw off the cap from the tires and then sell them for money. Not THAT serious, but pretty fucking shitty to come back to the car and see you are missing your air screw on the tire.

I was a drug dealer for a while. One night I drove into a parking lot to kill myself. When the cops found me in my running car, I had about 5 ounces of weed, a bottle of clonazapan, a open bottle of whiskey. a blood alcohol level of .35 and two illegal swords. Didn't get charged for anything.. Just had to spend a week in a psych hospital, which eventually turned into a voluntary rehab stint. I'm 63 days clean and sober today!

Back when I was in college in the late 90s, I met this student that was in a special 7-year program for future doctors. It consisted of 3 years of a loaded undergraduate schedule and 4 years of medical school at the normal pace. My university was full of smart people, but this guy was ridiculous. He's the son of Nepalese immigrants and he'd go to class, lock himself in his room for hours to do homework, then run on a treadmill for like 2 hours. He barely got any sleep but was always full of energy. I never considered him a close friend, but we were friendly with each other.

Anyways, come sophomore year this guy approaches me and asks if I could do him a favor. He had seen pictures of my friends on I on pbase getting into restricted areas on campus, which was something we did for fun, and thought that we could help him. For whatever reason, he was desperate to acquire a teacher's edition of a book from his professor. He needed someone to get into the lab where it was stored and deliver it to him. I thought he was kidding at first. However, he offered $600 to anyone that could do it and told me he purchased an electronic lock pick gun for the occasion. He considered doing it himself but worried he'd get kicked out of the program if he got caught.

I thought it over for a day because besides smoking pot I never really committed a crime and had a clean record. However, I was broke at the time and for a college student on financial aid $600 was a lot of cash. I decided to do this by myself since I wanted all of the cash and figured it would be less conspicuous. I met this guy a couple nights before I did it so that he could show me how the lock pick gun worked. It took some time to get a feel for it, but we practiced on some random desk locks and I felt pretty confident. I took custody of the device and wouldn't see him again until after the job was complete.

So, on the night I did the "heist," if you want to call it that, I just walked around the engineering building with my backpack and normal school gear to check it out. I was a history major and didn't know the building well, but considering that I'm Asian I did not look out of place there. I went at 11 pm because it was late enough that most of the classes and events would be done, but not so late to arouse suspicion. The problem was the door to the lab was visible from the outside through the glass entrance doors. A presentation hall slightly down the hall had a speaker as well, so a number of people were still milling around. The building locked the entrances after midnight, so I decided to find a random classroom to hide out in. I was super paranoid and waited till 1:30 am to come out. By then, the building was closed and the main lights turned off. I got into the lab without incident. The lock pick gun worked almost instantaneously and I was relieved to find the books inside an unlocked cabinet and not in anything locked as I wanted to get the f*** out of there. Anyways, I'm pretty sure I triggered the motion detector because I saw a campus security car drive up to the building as I was making my way out of there. However, it could have been totally unrelated for all I know. He wanted me to get rid of the lock pick gun to eliminate any possible evidence, so i chucked it into a storm drain on the way back to the residences.

The guy made good on his payment and besides a few chance encounters around campus I never saw him again. I heard he graduated in 3 years as planned and eventually finished medical school.

When I was 16, a friend used to make counterfeit money with a regular printer and paper. We would hand it out as change during our job selling programmes at football games.

Not very sophisticated but we did this for a few years and made thousands. If someone confronted us about it, we would just claim it must have come from another member of the public who was scamming us

This was about 2001-2004. We almost got caught a few times. It was a stupid thing to do as there were police everywhere. At the time it didn't really seem so bad. Obviously now I realise how cruel it was, basically stealing from the public.

I would almost say be careful about posting this if you are using an IP address linked to you due to the Secret Service, but in reality I don't think they would care about kids printing money on a home printer. I got a fake $20 a year or two ago and I called the cops. I am 100% certain the cashier knew it was fake, and probably passing it for her boyfriend or friend. She said she was out of $20's and went to get it from another cash drawer and just from her behavior, looking back she knew it was fake. She was about 16 herself and she was not sly about it at all. I'm just pissed I didn't look at it until I left the store. I remember thinking it must be her first day at the job because she seemed super nervous. Anyway, I reported it to the cops and they didn't even care.

Assault with a blunt object. I was at a concert once and this monstrous guy (we're talking 6'7'' and 350 lbs at least) was trying to drag teenage girls into the mosh pit to fuck them up.

It had been raining that day, so I had an umbrella with me. He came flying my way and knocked a friend of mine over, and I decided that was the last straw. His next trip over, I swung the umbrella with all my might and down fatass went.

Realizing what I'd done, I got the fuck out of there. I was paranoid for about a week, but never was even approached by anyone about it.

What kind of shitty gig would let that happen? All the venues round here, if someone was trying to drag people around and hurt them or whatever 'fuck them up' covers, especially young girls, they'd get the shit kicked out of them by the rest of the crowd, be chucked out the venue and probably battered in the carpark on their way out.

I mean, I've seen shitty idiots throwing weight around too much in mosh pits, or trying to start mosh pits in stupid places, but physically dragging people around? Nah. The kind of scene, and places that let mosh pits happen in the first place, wouldn't just let this guy wander around being a total cunt.

I once forgot to pay for the bottle of Pepsi I had with my dinner on the ferry back from Belgium. I remember because it was the first time I ever smuggled a large amount of marijuana into the United Kingdom.

I once stole the watch display case (well it's contents) from a department store after I figured out how to open them. Repeated it at the same location next day, and at other locations over the coming days. About $30k+ of watches.

I was on duty of patroling the tanks yard on independence day .. We were only about 3 people left in the entire base (just had to watch the tanks) we were miserable , we could hear the fireworks but couldnt see them.. so .. we stole an army hammer veihcle drove out and away from the army base bought lots of beers and food drove back bribed the guy at the entrance with a beer and sat on a tank and had good times.. Not even a little sorry..

Buying petrol, place the item towards your side of the counter where the cashier may not notice. Look distracted, pay for your petrol, and take the item. If confronted, well damn, you put it on the counter, they should have added it on!

I've never done this intentionally, but I only realized I got a free Mars bar the other week when I looked at my receipt in the car.

Was high and leaving a store holding a Monster and buying something like a candy bar. Put candy bar down and held Monster. Asked me if I was just buying the candy bar and said yes. Realized I stole Monster upon exiting store.

I stole food from the cafeteria before too when I was a kid. In my defense, I tried to pay for it but there were many kids waving their money at the lady and I couldn't get her to take mine. So I gave up and left with the food unpaid.

All throughout school I was always thinking about how easy it would be to just steal something from the cafeteria and get away with it. They hardly ever paid any attention to that stuff. I could have just grabbed a cookie and pocketed it in this one area where you are out of view of any cameras and also of any workers. I was always too afraid to try it though.

When I was around 15 I was hanging out with a few people of the wrong kind. We needed alcohol, and they decided that we would do a break at the local bar. They wanted me to help them out, as I was usually the brains in any operation we had going. So naturally I made it out so that I would only have to stand watch in a place where I would only have to jump a fence to get away.

Anyway, I still don't know how they got the door open, I'm thinking they probably had a key, but they would never tell me how they did it. They walked in, grabbed probably 20 bottles of booze. Stuffed it all into some boxes, and got out through a window to the roof. I had a ladder ready, they climbed down, and we got out. No one ever spoke of it again.

Oh yeah, forgot that. The roof was of course second option, but we did it because some lights turned on in the house opposite the one we were breaking into, and the roof exit was on the back of the house, so we weren't at risk of being spotted there.

tl;dr Driving without a license or permit, across state lines, underage.

My parents' divorce was finalized when I was about 10, and my father promptly moved two states away. This was for the best in pretty much every case except when I needed to get somewhere that required a highway -- although my mother got one of the cars in the divorce, she has severe anxiety and can't drive on anything bigger than a double width two way street without crippling panic attacks. Taking me places was one of my father's jobs, even if he usually flaked. It was harder than you'd think (virtually impossible if no one else I knew was going) to find people willing to drive us places and as a result, I learned to drive at... like 12?

We got pretty bold about it; by 14 I was driving my mother to work on a toll road, at 15 I drove myself, my mother, and two friends to a convention in Pennsylvania. When I got a permit she put me on the insurance and I'd take the car alone to school events and drop my friends off all the time. (At 16 it's legal to be driving with a permit if a licensed adult was in the car. We ignored the last bit. No highways, certainly no state lines, and not at night... ignored all of that.) I didn't get my license until I was 17, at which point I'd been driving around illegally for about five years.

Sure was an adrenaline rush of panic that one time a trooper flashed his lights behind me on the New Jersey Turnpike.... but when I changed lanes to head for the shoulder he just whizzed by and pulled someone else over. Whew! No other close calls, we always used EZpass so toll attendants wouldn't see it was a kid driving.

Basically when I was younger me and my friends would fuck people's lawns up because we were little shits. One night we got into a gated community with road flares. I threw one up on a balcony butttt the door was open. Ended up lighting the bed on fire and thus the rest of the house. Brick were shat.

Took a pack of starbursts from the grocery store when I was six. And lied to the Spanish and Canadian governments to smuggle an Iranian girl into Canadian.

Edit: well I guess explanations are in order... My class went on a trip to Spain in grade 12 and one of my class mates lost her pass port (note: we were not friends. I found her terribly scatter brained and irritating) when my teacher and this girl, of Iranian ethnicity, went to get her a new Canadian passport at the consulate in Spain they needed me and another girl to lie and say we'd known Iranian for years and were good friends and knew her family. Truth is she'd only been in Canada for six months and therefore couldn't get a passport. I was actually insanely pissed off because my dad was a military contractor working in the middle east at the time, if we'd been caught lying it would have put his security clearance in jeopardy; and he would have lost his job. I was the only person who seemed to care about that bit though.

Edit2: I went to a grocery store with my mum when I was 6 and she wouldn't buy me a chocolate bar. So when no one was looking I pocketed a pack of starbursts. Then I went home and ate my guilt candy.

That horrible, horrible moment when you realize you fucked up. You did it, you pressed the wrong button and now that stolen sweet roll is sitting in your inventory. The shop keeper saw you do it all.

So you think you have a way out, huh? You think you have a chance to make it out of the city before the law can catch up with you? No other option crosses your mind. Time is running out, and you have to move fast if you want to get out of this without having to confront the consequences of your action head on.

The store keep is angry, for you have stolen something from his/her very own business, the one that keeps their family under a roof with food on the table. That is their property, and you stole it, accident or not. They start to run out from around the bar with a dagger in hand to stop you from leaving with that sweet roll. He/she is yelling for the guards. Your mind races, and you draw your sword, without even thinking. It's like clockwork, you are the Champion, right? When in danger, it is your first reaction. You slash, and the innocent salesperson falls to the ground with blood quickly pooling around the body. You need to leave.

You run out the door. During the loading screen, you contemplate your next move. Do I escape to the wilderness and become an outlaw? Do I turn myself in and do the time? Do I try to bribe the guard? Too late, the loading screen is done and you are staring at the streets of Imperial City. The passing citizens have no idea of the horrendous crimes you have committed inside the shop. The coast is clear, so you run.

But where do you go? There is going to be law enforcement swarming the streets soon enough. You try to move swiftly in and out of alleys and behind buildings, but you can only think of one thing, "Why the hell did I choose this damn Heavy Armor skill?" Seemed like a good idea at the time, didn't it? But you didn't expect to become a criminal on the run when you first started playing. You are back on the streets again, but you see an exit. Can you make it? You'd better hope so. You head towards your freedom. Suddenly, your expression changes. The rendering distance catches up to you, and there is a guard standing by the exit. He sees you, and boy does he look mad. You turn and try to run, but it is inevitable.

Time stops. Your character turns around to face his assailant. You brace for the upcoming thundering roar of the law catching up with you. You try to lower the volume in time, but it is in vain.

Broke into a little convenience store when I lived out in the boonies. My brother picked the lock and we ran in, took a bunch of beers and soda and candy and a little stack of 20s under the counter by the register. My bus stop was right in front of said store. Next day while waiting the lady came in saying "oh shit I forgot to lock up last night!"

My tiny crime seems like a joke compared to all these drug smuggling stories but whatever.

I was in high school with my best friend (we'll call him TC). Over the summer I slept over his house and around 11:30 at night we decided to go walking around the neighborhood and eventually, we ended up walking all the way to our old elementary school which is about an hour walk away from his house. Now in our county children under 18 years of age had to be home at 11:00 PM or under adult supervision out at night (TC was 16 and I was 17 and neither of us had IDs on us). After almost an hour of walking around the school, TC gets this crazy idea to climb on top of the school. I'm pretty uneasy about this because there are security cams everywhere and "No Trespassing" signs around the school fence perimeter. TC calls me a pussy for not agreeing with him so I get pissed and we climb the fence onto the school grounds.

After getting over the fence, we rush over towards the first portable classroom (an outdoor boxed classroom) and help each other climb the wall of it. The school roof is now only 10 feet away from the portable roof, so I make a leap of faith and dive from one roof to the other catching myself with my elbows. I was never coordinated. TC does so with ease because I'm the pussy. We're finally on the school roof and it's just cool as shit exploring the entire rooftops under the stars. Anyways, I become less of a pussy and start hopping gaps and doing hardcore parkour. Only 30 minutes of hardcore parkouring, TC and I stop and hear somebody yell, "Who's there?! I know you're on the roof. Get down now or I'll call the cops!" We're scared shitless. 4 stories on top of a school rooftop and we decide to just sit down and wait until the security guard passes by.

Now here's where the real shit begins. We wait for about 16 minutes just thinking of the craziest scenarios of what our parents would do to us because we trespassed after hours (yeah we're the badasses). All of a sudden we see red, white, and blue lights flashing in the parking lot right below us. Two cop cars and the same security guard are looking right back at us when I grab TC and we dip. Fast. We're hardcore parkouring all over again. I can barely see in the middle of the night but I feel myself hopping gaps and taking leaps at every chance. We get down to 2 stories of rooftop and the only ways down are the way back to the portable we came from which was guarded by one of the cop cars or a straight jump down to the playground and out the back perimeter fences. I brace myself and I drop. It felt like floating in the air for seconds until I reached bottom. However, I look up to find TC looking straight at the cops like a deer in the headlights (something like this http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr03/2013/3/23/14/anigif_enhanced-buzz-21144-1364064132-0.gif). In my loudest voice I yell out "WHO'S THE PUSSY NOW?!" he regains his senses and drops down in front of me. We both sprint towards the fence leap over and keep running. We hear the cop cars driving along the road towards out direction so we run into the woods. 15 minutes of running, we're both dead tired and just lie down inside a bunch of bushes. I remember I kept repeating "Who's the pussy now? Who's the pussy now? Who's the pussy now?" and he kept repeating "Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up."

We made it back to his house after another hour and praise Cheebus for the getaway.

TL;DR Trespassed onto school grounds after curfew hours with best friend. Best friend turns out to be a pussy.

Drunk driving. It was common when I was younger. Once, when driving out of a bar parking lot, I heard the megaphone from a cop car behind me, "Turn on your headlights!" Scared me, and I drove home very carefully. Still drunk, but carefully. Nowadays I would be put in jail, and rightly so.

I'm a student at the University of Chicago. There's a free printing service/startup on campus called Freenters run by a bunch of Korean noobs (with more business smarts than tech knowledge) - basically you get to print for free in exchange for having banner ads at the bottom of each page.

I started poking around their setup last year and found some interesting things:

Their print kiosks weren't locked down and were logged in with admin privileges.

They had root/admin credentials for their web server and database stored on the kiosks.

Naturally, I couldn't resist paying a visit to their server with the purloined credentials. I manage to get access to all their code and their database. It's obvious these guys had no idea what they were doing. Code was shitty as hell and they only used a single round of SHA-256 for password hashing.

I shoot them an anonymous email telling them about their vulnerabilities...rumor has it other people knew about their security flaws too. No response.

Fast-forward a bit to right before finals week, when I know people would be using Freenters. I enlist the help of some friends to join in the fun. We deface their website and replace their homepage with a download containing all of their code and a database dump, signed by the "UChicago Electronic Army". Meanwhile my comrades-in-crime rig the unsecured print kiosks to print several hundred all-black pages. Hilarious stuff.

We had a endless supply of laughing material for several days thanks to all the press our hack received:

From what I hear the Freenters people initially tried to track us down. But we made sure to wipe all logs, destroy any physical evidence, and keep quiet. I'm pretty sure they've given up looking for us by now.

Here it goes, I sped, I followed too closely, I ran a stop sign, I almost hit a chevy, I sped some more, I failed to yield at a crosswalk, I sped some more, I changed lanes in the intersection, I changed lanes without signaling while running a red light, and speeding

When I was 4, I shoplifted, albeit without knowing it was illegal. It was in one of those Asian convenience stores. I secretly grabbed bits of candy with the stealth of a freaking ninja, sauntered out and went home with my family. When my mum found out and she flipped on me, except 4 y.o me had no idea why. Didn't feel guilty back then, and I still don't.